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Hanging on jungle gym bars in what, before today, was known as Palmetto Playground in Brooklyn Heights, fans of Adam Yauch (MCA) gathered for the renaming of a park that the young Beastie Boy played in as a child.

When Adam Yauch died, his family and friends lost someone they loved. The rest of us lost someone we knew of and whose work we loved. The Tibetan people lost one of their most high-profile supporters in the U.S.

There is usually one band you can look back on and think "these guys raised me, they remained the definition of cool throughout the years, I wanted to be like them and studied everything they did." For me, and for many others across generations, that was the Beastie Boys.

When I heard that Adam Yauch had died, it was like learning that one of the guys I went to high school had died. I honestly had not listened to a Beastie Boys album in a few years, but they were one of those bands that inhabited my life.

As we remember Adam Yauch and his pioneering musicality, we should also acknowledge his pioneering civic courage -- his identity as a punk musician and rapper for whom citizenship was a natural expression of art, and interdependence a necessary concomitant of citizenship.

I want to mourn the death of an icon by watching tributes on a so-called music station. Yauch and the Beasties were pioneers in the hip hop and pop culture world. This news hurts. It's time for MTV to return to its roots.